With freedom comes responsibility

Recently, a Colorado Springs man was arrested for threatening Rep. Rhonda Fields and her family. Franklin Sain allegedly sent emails to Fields because of her sponsorship of new gun legislation in the Colorado House of Representatives. The emails published on the CBS Denver website are full of racial and gender slurs and threats directed at the president of the United States, and Fields and her family that are crimes under Colorado and federal law.

Yet Sain’s attorney asserts that this is free speech protected by the First Amendment. What’s even more disturbing is that at least half the comments on this story on CBS Denver’s website have Fields as the tyrant and Sain as the hero. By that standard, are these people’s heroes also Adolf Hitler and Joseph Stalin? They had similar beliefs.

My father fought the Nazis inside Germany as a German citizen. He lost three sons during that war. He brought his family to the United States because he believed that democracy was the only way to ensure that liberty and freedom could survive. No one is going to take your guns away. Rep. Mike McLachlan was elected in a democratic election.

He and other legislators are responding to the outrage of thousands of people, including children who are needlessly dying because of uncontrolled gun violence in this country. One of the things my father made sure we all understood is that “for every moment that you have liberty and freedom, you must have an equal moment of responsibility.”